Now here’s an alarming piece of news – somewhere between eye-popping and eye-brow raising – that Western media disdains from noting. Even though it concerns us all acutely. Moscow hosted two days of rapprochement talks between Turkey and Syria and Iran. Ostensibly the focus is on reconciling Turkey and Syria, but it certainly looks like a regional all-stars bash with implications radiating out to and beyond the region. Equally significant are the absentees: US, Israel, Saudi Arabia et al. The terse talkfest got largely overlooked because nobody expects anything to come of it, anything concrete or balance-shifting. After all, this was not a summit of leaders but a convocation of top ambassadors. By Melik Kaylan in Forbes on April 30, 2023.
So why should Moscow bother, in that case? Glorified theater? The Kremlin wants to show that it can still generate a mini-grandstand of five regional powers. Putin needs the PR effect for his domestic audience. Indeed, all the participating regimes need it. That seems a plausible explanation. But a closer look suggests deeper waters. Look again at the line-up: Turkey is the odd one out and the sole Nato member, ranged against a united bloc of its rivals. So now let’s ask ourselves why should Erdogan put his top envoys through such a pointless adversarial exercise? He’s got a national election coming up in mid-May, one that he should lose in a fair fight after the earthquake debacle destroyed his popular support. So he’s nervous. He wants to know what his foreign rivals might plot against him at this critical juncture. In other words, the meeting is likely not such a nominal photo-op. It’s really about what the enemy bloc, Russia/Iran/Syria, can promise positively and threaten negatively, what they demand and what they offer, just at a moment when he’s most vulnerable.
His vulnerable moment, by the way, encompasses not just the pre-election period but the weeks and months afterwards when the outcome will inevitably shake his legitimacy. We can assume he won’t go quietly, in fact he won’t go at all, though he’s so unpopular that the country will be convinced that he lost. As this column argued previously, Erdogan cannot afford to leave power because the opposition will purge his family, his party, his oligarchs, the media, judiciary and virtually the entire civil service elite, for being corrupt. So he will find ways to cheat the vote or to ‘share’ power or rule illicitly as a kind of eminence grise like Ivanishvili in Georgia. Any which way, the country won’t like it, because they know he should have lost power. Expect instability to follow, possibly even renewed elections, confusion over the seat of power, division within the army, capital flight, and much else. So the Moscow meetings were not just about the run-up to the May election but also for the interregnum period afterwards when Erdogan will need all the help he can get. And when he will continue to be vulnerable.
So what’s the Russia/Iran/Syria (RIS) gambit in Moscow? Blandishments to Erdogan would top the list. “We don’t require that you fight a fair election or hand over power if you lose. Unlike the West. In fact, we are your truer allies in that regard. No nonsense about human rights or a free press. We can help you keep power indefinitely. Actually, we would prefer it because that way Turkey won’t become fully part of the Western bloc.” RIS can help him by flooding the country with dark money or cheap natural gas or cheap oil from Russian or Iraqi pipelines (Iran can deliver the latter through its control of Shiite parties in Iraq. Moreover a good deal of Iranian oil goes out clandestinely to the world via Iraq.). In fact, Erdogan has already started to bribe the electorate by offering various economic benefits like cheap natural gas and electricity and inflationary hikes in minimum wages and the like.
So RIS will offer blandishments. To which Erdogan will reply, maybe I’ll take it but I don’t need you to keep me in power. And this is where the hard bargaining begins. The carrot might not work, so what’s the stick? What can they threaten to do against him? And what do they want in return for desisting? Erdogan is especially vulnerable over the issue of the three or four million refugees Turkey is housing, mostly from Syria. He’d like to return them to safe zones back in their own country. Turks feel overwhelmed by them (sound familiar?) especially at a time when the Turkish economy is tanking sharply. As elections loom, Erdogan would like to make gestures of highly visible repatriation to safe zones in Syria. Russia/Iran/Syria can make that difficult by bombing those zones. The rivals (RIS) can do worse. They can shut off oil from Russia and Iraq for short bursts before the election.
These are not longterm threats. They cannot be. Russia needs oil revenue from Turkey and so does Iraq. But, timed right, sudden debacles can darken the national psychology before elections. Normally, Erdogan counterbalances RIS threats by being nice to Nato or the EU but here he’s somewhat trapped. At this juncture, the West would rather that he lose cleanly, let go of power, allow real democracy back, free all the political prisoners etc. That way madness lies for Erdogan. He can’t ask the West to counterbalance the RIS threats because the West is happy to see him go. So he may have to give in to some RIS demands. Now let’s look at those demands – not what you’d imagine at first blush. For example, Erdogan won’t be caught publicly refusing to sell Bayraktar drones to Ukraine, however much Moscow demands it. He won’t close the Bosphorus to Nato ships. He won’t allow a flood of sanctioned money through Turkish banks – until well after the elections. Why? Because the US will sanction those banks and voters will face a banking debacle as well as the current inflation and collapsing economy. Remember – if Erdogan retains power by election fraud, if he retains power period, severe unrest will follow. The country knows he’s unpopular and must lose.
So what conditions will RIS demand that Erdogan might actually agree to? Restoring ties with Damascus? Yes but only as a process, just like the Saudis, so that Assad slowly gets rehabbed. A vile thought but…alas, welcome to the region. RIS will ask that Ankara stop helping Azerbaijan. This column has written multiply about how Erdogan is bonding with Central Asia and rebirthing the Turkic Silk Road via Azerbaijan. (When you’re a populist like Erdogan you need to feed the populace imperial dreams in place of food and freedoms.) At any rate, both Tehran and Moscow want Erdogan to stop fishing in their back yard. What they, Iran/Russia, don’t want is pipelines and trade routes from the ‘Stans circumventing the Iran/Russia geographical choke hold on Central Asia and getting out to the world freely. Erdogan has staked a lot of popularity on doing just that. He may have to put brakes on the strategic maneuver for a while.
Israel. As Iran inches towards nuclear break-out, Israel is preparing a major strike, the details of which Israelis apparently won’t share with the US as a result of America’s intelligence leakiness. For that potential Israeli air-strike on Iran’s nuke centers, at least some overflights through Turkish territory will be needed. RIS would rather Ankara doesn’t allow the Israelis such access. The alternate route via Iraqi skies is controlled by the US and Washington would certainly need to know of, even participate in, the initiative. In short, they have a veto. A previous column discussed the recent Saudi rapprochement towards Iran noting that the Saudis, believing that Iranian nukes are inevitable, want nuclear defense guarantees from the US, which the US is avoiding as Washington no longer wants to protect or encourage fossil fuel sources abroad.
In other words, America’s continuing disengagement from the Middle East, the Saudis re-embrace of Iran, leaves Israel dangling. The Turks don’t want Iran to have nukes. Neither does Israel. Erdogan will allow Israeli jets to strike Iran. Unless RIS can prevail on him.